More than two years after the show ended, I e-mailed Forest to see if I could ask him a few questions about LOLwork. We never overlapped at Cheezburger, and he had since left the company and was happy to talk.

Forest explained that while the show wasn’t scripted, it was “highly directed.” No lines were given, but the producers planned out each scenario and situation. The same scenes were played out multiple times to catch them at different angles.

When I asked him what LOLwork’s semifictional depiction of the workplace was attempting to evoke, he urged me to not read too far into it. “It is much easier to sign a TV deal with producers and a network to spin a mostly fictional version of your company than it is to produce a show on your own that depicts how things really are in an office, good or bad.”

He talked at length about the artifice of reality television—not necessarily a new idea, but one that was interesting to hear from someone who had been party to the charade. Forest believed that reality TV is made to give viewers what they want, and in this way, I couldn’t help but think that this played exactly into Cheezburger’s MO of putting what the readers want first.

The biggest surprise was that his relationship with Sarah was actually genuine. Or at least it became genuine. Forest and Sarah actually started dating toward the end of filming, and their relationship continued for another year before they broke up. Sarah confirmed this, also over e-mail. “Our relationship was genuine. A lot of it we actually had to hide from the cameras, rather than play it up.”

It turns out the best part of LOLwork was also the most authentic. Despite what Forest said about it being easier to greenlight a show that plays to the conventions of reality TV, I couldn’t help but wonder how much better the show could have been if the rest of its portrayal of Cheezburger had been as honest.

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